http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/hockey/12419952.htm
So that puts the NHL having the usual Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Finns, Russians, Czechs and Slovaks. But now there’s also Swiss, French, Norwegians, Germans, Ukrainians and Uzbeks.
I’m going with citizenry, if you went with birthplaces, then it gets stickier with the UK, South Africa and maybe even Greece.
I need to research this more when the new roster book from the Hockey News is released.
Click here. (Dead Link now)
I have it reroute to my old CapMac site due to the graphics involved.
Enjoy and post comments here.
Never before have I received so much static from the Republicans I know for this book’s cover, unlike What Liberal Media? or Weapons of Mass Deception. When they saw me with this book, they automatically bitched about it being another Bush bashing, which he deserves. They must have been thinking of David Corn’s book.
No, Alterman’s latest foray is about the recent history of presidential whoppers and their consequences. In his introduction he states upfront that he covers only WWII on without Nixon (who he says has been pretty well covered), Clinton (whose lies didn’t result in the deaths of 1800 US soldiers), Ford, Truman, Eisenhower and Carter (they didn’t tell any worthwhile lies of note, although I beg to differ on Ike).
That leaves Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan and Bush the First. What? Isn’t Alterman a Liberal? How could he dedicate three out of four chapters on the Democrats? Because he isn’t a partisan hack and being critical of mistakes shouldn’t be a sign of betrayal or weakness.
So what were their lies and the consequences?
Is there any hope? In the final chapter, Alterman says it’s unlikely in the immediate future but the goal would be to get politicians to suffer more for the short-term gains they have from their disastrous lies. Not likely to happen right now since many of the liars from the Reagan period are working for Bush the Second’s regime. I can only take solace that most of Johnson and Kennedy’s people are dead so they won’t be returning in the next several years.
Peddlin Dreams – Maria McKee: You could say this one is High Dive Part 2 since it feels like a continuation her 2003 release and maybe it was the leftovers. I personally enjoy the album but I think most people will find this one gloomier since her songs are more pessimistic and desperate such as “People in the Way.” There are couple of happier moments too, “Season of the Fair” at the opening yet that’s not the overall mood one walks away with when the CD ends.
Similarities: Cary Caitlin, Roseanne Cash, Lone Justice, Lyle Lovett, Beth Wood.
Recommendation: For Maria McKee fans, grows on you with strong reservations.
Paper Tigers – Caesars: This one has been out for a while, I’ve just been slow reviewing it. I would have to say that it’s definitely one of my top ten favorites this year which I found surprising because their previous album wasn’t memorable yet I only bought this being the completist I am with music collecting. The only downside is the re-issuing of “Jerk it out” on this album. My personal guess is to take advantage of the buzz they received from being used for an iPod commercial. Putting the recycling aside, this release is much stronger and polished. My favorite song is “We Gotta’ Leave” which is so catchy, especially at the chorus. Definitely one of the best singles of the year and actually the remainder of CD is excellent. So excellent that it was hard to decide which singles to add to my stream which is always a great dilemma.
Similarities: ? and the Mysterions, Sahara Hotnights, Sloan.
Recommendation: Worth Buying.
X&Y – Coldplay: As I’ve grown older, I’ve become less of an elitist with my music. Popularity is no longer a disqualifier for purchasing (or adding to my stream). However, Coldplay is definitely a band that has arrived in musical circles. What I mean by that word is they have a level of popularity near U2 levels, most people buy their albums, they’re on most radio stations and they sell tickets to large venues pretty easily. Time will tell if it is sustainable. In addition, for me, Coldplay is in the same boat as U2, REM and the Cure. They’re staples of a genre of music I like but I don’t get that excited about them. They do songs I dislike yet they do other songs that I do enjoy (quick apology to my friend Mark who’s a big Cure fan). So how’s the album? Really good despite all my quantifiers. I think it lives up to the hype built up to its arrival so don’t dismiss it just over “Speed of Sound” being played to death.
Similarities: U2, Catherine Wheel, Travis.
Recommendation: Worth Buying.
I scored some new containers from The Container Store this weekend as part of my kitchen-cleaning project. I put them all in the dishwasher to clean them out and whoops! These two set me back over $12 and only after they became pieces of modern art did I see the “hand wash only” etched in the bottom.
D’oh! I must be celebrating the next set of Simpson DVDs early.
Hockey’s on shortly and for those of us in 10.4, here’s a widget to help us focus our excitement for opening night. Go Flyers!
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/sports/nhlgameonclock.html
Firstly, I want to quickly declare that there will be certain words you will never see in my reviews or comments on Gaming.
Now with that tirade off my chest, let’s get down to brass tacks on this book. Stormwrack is the third in a series of extreme environment books from Wizards of the Coast. The previous two dealt with the arctic and the desert respectively. The $35 price tag killed my interest pretty quickly and my campaign for the past five years hasn’t really delved into those environmental conditions anyway. Within the last couple years, my campaign (nicknamed Plan A) has dealt with sahuagin (shark people) through the awesome Saltmarsh trilogy original written by TSR UK in the early 80s. Upon the first glance, I did like what I saw, namely the adventure materials near the back and better details on ships. The book breaks down into the usual formulaic sections these types of sourcebooks have but that’s not a criticism, that’s a nice, re-assuring fact.
Again, the price tag really scares away most and it should because the races in this book are just padding. The wiser, more successful formula would’ve been to combine several extreme environments into one book of 170-200 pages instead of three thin, 120-page books filled with material which would’ve been better served in through Dragon magazine.
The Bottom Line: Unless you’re a big fan of pirates and sea-based campaigns via great adventures like the Saltmarsh trilogy or The Isle of Dread setting, this book is only worth buying if you find a used copy at Half Price Books.
Check it out. It’s an awesome idea but since Americans are chained to their cars, it’s pretty hobbled.
http://snarkychef.blogspot.com
I remember seeing this in the theaters 25 years ago. Since it was relatively cheap, I scored it for Somara’s graduation visit.
The musical movie opens with a storm and a sailor, obviously Popeye, rowing into an odd little island village called Sweet Haven (stated and explained in the first song). The residents are an unfriendly collection of archetypes (the mailman, the mayor, the barber, etc.) along with the characters everyone knows; Olive Oyl, Bluto and Wimpy. The entire village is also dominated by a tax collector and Bluto who represent Sweet Haven’s actual ruler, the mysterious Commodore. Popeye comes to this desolate rock in search of his father and this is the last remaining place he hasn’t checked. Meanwhile, he gets entangled in Olive’s on-again/off-again engagement to Bluto, adopts Sweet Pea and alienates the village with demonstrations of his great strength against the local bullies.
Even after two decades this movie still holds up despite being a weird musical (rather weak material by Harry Nilsson). The make-up job on Robin Williams’ arms is still credible too. Poor Shelly Duval didn’t need as much work to be Olive. The real clincher for me was the attention to detail. All the people of Sweet Haven have the same oversized feet and shoes from the E C Segar strips. There’s also the cartoon-level of exaggerated action reminiscient of the great silent movies. It’s hard to believe this movie was directed by Robert Altman since most of his movies have never interested me.
It is still one of the best comic-strip-adaptation movies made during the early 1980s run of them (Superman, Flash Gordon, Swamp Thing). Writer Jules Feiffer (yes the cartoonist) went with an “origin” story in which the characters start off as strangers and through their personalities, the story and its subplots all come together with an ending in the same style as a standard Popeye cartoon.
I found it in the kids section so the burning question is, will children like it these days with all the CGI-based competition? I sincerely think so, especially when they hear Popeye curse near the end of the film.
Today, the home version of my stream turned three years old today. Quite a string of milestones for it this weekend too.
In three years it started from over 2000 songs and now it works from almost 5000. I fell short by 116 this year. No matter, next year the goal is 6000 either by June 24 (the birthday of the one at work) or August 7.
To give you an idea of the variety KMAG works from, the average pop, oldies, country or rock station works from a playlist based on less than 1000 songs, thanks to a man named Lee Abrams. That includes those Bob, Fred and Jack stations because their so-called spontaneity is bullshit, the songs are figured out most likely by focus groups. I had to throw in a jab at Austin’s Bob FM which appeared last year. It’s an annoying station that I could set my watch to.
It played its 400,000th song this weekend too. I wasn’t around to catch it because it happened when I was at work but I miscalculated and thought it would happen later this month. What was it? “Fait Accompli” by Curve (the band that Garbage ripped off for their sound). What song has it played the most in three years? I’m not a programmer so I have no idea other than it’s probably one of the first 2000 songs I had put in it. One day, I’ll let you know. Confidentially, I think we’ll be disappointed to know.
Now 5000 songs to work with doesn’t sound impressive. There are iPods that store up to 12,000. Agreed. But KMAG is based upon 5000 songs culled from over 1800 albums because not every song is necessarily good, including those Greatest Hits collections, you still get a stinker or two even then. Besides, KMAG is currently hosted on a Mac Mini with only an 80 Gigabyte hard drive. My 1800-plus collection takes up 110 Gigabytes.
So check it out. Put in your opinion to me, even though one I did receive was harsh yet I thought it was inaccurate. In iTunes, just do Command-U and paste in this:
http://66.136.218.35:8000/kmag
For those who insist on not using iTunes, the same path does work with other MP3 players such as WinAmp.
Due to a thunderstorm on Thursday night (August 4), the power went out (a common occurrence in Austin) but then the whole site was kaputski! Oh the poetic justice many of my customers would enjoy knowing of my misfortune (as you know, I have to give bad news in the form of “You need to back it up or restore from your backup. Oh, you don’t have one and you’re screwed? Bummer”).
Not so that night! The computer gods were on my side for I pushed my resourcefulness and (what little) patience I demonstrated. I’ll just give you the short version though, I managed to delete certain files, restore others and fix the permissions accordingly. Those who need the long version, I have it documented down and I need to hand it over to Apple’s appropriate channels to see if they care. Once again, I proved that I am not as dumb as I look nor as my age states since the computer business is notorious for agist discrimination. At least the false message the browsers were giving me were a decent foundation for me to eventually figure out the problem.
Steve 1, Blojsom & Mother Nature 0!
I know that the bottom line in hockey is what matters because when you brush away the fandom and the loyalty, pro hockey is a business.
The losses of Tony Amonte and John LeClair I could handle. They were expected. Tony was picked up since Phoenix couldn’t use him. John had been on the trading block for a couple seasons due to the idiocy of signing him for $9 million/year.
However, I didn’t think that my team would trade away their biggest draw, Jeremy Roenick! But they did because they made a lucrative offer to get Peter Forsberg, currently one of the best players out there. The Flyers had dibs on him over a decade ago and traded him away for Eric Lindros. We all know how wise that decision panned out to be. However, I must admit that it was a colorful period for Philly then.
I will remain a Flyers fan first because I believe that the Broad Street Bullies have one of the strongest chances of winning the next Stanley Cup. I would have preferred it with Jeremy Roenick, John LeClair, Mark Recchi and Tony Amonte on that team though.
So I will give Peter his chance, JR even admitted that he’s the best player on the ice right now. Class to the end.
Oh yeah, the Flyers also signed Darien Hatcher. The guy who broke JR’s jaw with an intentional charge when they were playing for Dallas and Phoenix respectively. Guess JR had to bail with that acquisition.
No matter what though, I can remain a faithful Flyers fan and still root for JR as he gets closer to breaking Joey Mullen’s record. I just hope the Kings get him some help to pull it off or they trade him to Phoenix which has a better chance, and he still has a house there.
The premise is simple, the trials and travails of high school but it’s a high school for superheroes. Not entirely original and pretty much expected from Disney; the comic book PS238 has been around for over two years and The Incredibles covered the family matters better. The new wrinkle here is the story focusing on Will Stronghold, son of the world-famous Commander (Russell) and Jetstream (Preston), attending this school but he has no powers. However, this is a Disney movie, it gets sorted out pretty quickly; even they won’t go with the after-school special route with this story.
Now, despite Sky High being for superheroes, it’s a high school first: cliques, bullies, a snotty cheerleader who has the power to divide herself into an entire squad and the unsympathetic gym teacher Coach Boomer, played very well by Bruce Campbell. The only major difference is that on the first day of school, the gym teacher divides the freshmen up into two camps which will determine the educational track they take. If the kid’s power is impressive or useful, then it’s the hero track. If the kid’s power is lame or very limited, then it’s the sidekick track with four years of humiliation. Obviously Will is placed into the sidekick program after Boomer practically injures him with tests designed for his parents (flying and heavy lifting). Then comes the expected snobs versus the unpopular kids scenes and when Will confess to his parents that he’s a “gasp!” sidekick? Yawn! There’s the bigger storyline to get through in 90 minutes thankfully.
It’s a decent movie. Definitely appropriate for kids and superhero fans. The bigger attraction to it for me was the supporting cast: Kevin McDonald as the science teacher, Dave Foley as the primary sidekick teacher (definitely revisiting his various teacher roles from Kids in the Hall skits), Lynda Carter as the principal and Cloris Leachman as the school nurse. Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob, has a cameo but you have be really attentive to catch him. Finally, I know it’s just a movie, yet John Hughes proved it was possible to cast actors who match the ages of the characters (Sixteen Candles namely). No dice here, it’s the standard Hollywood tactic of having 18-19 year olds portray high school freshmen. One can hope someone else will get it right in the future.
As my title states, I think Sky High is worthy of renting since the acting and execution puts it head and shoulders above Disney’s usual fare of mediocre family movies. Kids under 12 will dig it. Kids between 12-19 are always jaded so there’s no point caring what they think. Adults 20+ will be amused, again, because of the supporting cast.
Despite Hollywood claiming record-breaking revenues every Summer, attendance has been declining every year. Seems that the suits in charge can’t (or won’t) put two and two together and realize that $6.25 for a matinee is still too much. I don’t even want to think about how much full price is now in Austin.
Anyway, I have changed the rankings to reflect Hollywood’s avarice:
However, don’t expect too many reviews from me, that’s more Jose’s turf these days. I will be posting reviews of DVD rentals but expect them to be favorable unless I accidentally stumble upon a real dog.
In less than a month, I made a decision about the future of the Picayune as you can see. I owe a ton of gratitude to my friend Mark for pushing me toward the blog direction with my site. Ever since I finally moved from print to the Web in early 1998, presenting my reviews, news and other hullabaloo has always been a conundrum. First there were frames but that proved annoying and messy, especially when frames within frames would accidently be triggered. Frames fell out of fashion anyway and I went with the opening of new pages as you went. I didn’t care for it much but it was the lesser of two lousy choices since most people get confused or lost when navigating. (Is this a new page or do I press the back button?) It doesn’t help when you still have a significant minority of friends who can’t get broadband in their area. Then came along blogs and just like the homepages of the late Nineties, most them suck! Many blogs suck even more than the horrendous webpages ever done. You don’t need to ask why, you know the answer already but I’ll go ahead and flog the dead horse; they’re mainly online diaries or right-/left-wing diatribes (but more often right-wing). I promise that I would never do one because the Picayune is dedicated to being an electronic letter (or newsletter) from me to my friends near or far. Oh sure, I read some blogs. My brother’s since he isn’t reliable on calling or writing me. Some friends too and thankfully, the majority of them have stayed in the realm of useful information while others go on their rants; one friend has a Jekyll & Hyde complex. then I am also guilty of following the political ones of more well-known intellectuals; Eric Alterman and Juan Cole. I stick with Alterman due to his articulate way of defending the Left and pointing out the hole-ridden logic of the Right and its true ally, the So-Called-Liberal Media. Alterman isn’t afraid to call the Left on the carpet when they blow it too, read his books, especially his latest, When Presidents Lie which spends the first three chapters attacking three Democratic presidents, hardly some kind of bias for Liberals.
I digress (par for the course). While the blog was in an experimental stage as of the Fourth of July, Mark made the best argument to have our friend Giles “flip the switch” on rerouting the DNS back to my house. Chronological Order was Mark’s point in two words. All the writings I do are presented in reverse chronological order when you arrive at my site now. Then on the side bards, the topics I like to review or write about are on the right side if you just want to read about Hockey for example. Another feature I personally like is the interactive nature of blogs. People can contribute to the story and how I am soooo guilty of doing this to other sites, especially when a political grenade is thrown, but I make no apologies there. The contribution part delivers the immediacy I would hope you, my friends will participate in.
Now this will still be a work in progress due to the Picayune being driven by Blosjom (pronounced blossom) through Mac OS X Server 10.4 on a Mac Mini. Unlike the fancier, more well-developed solutions such as Moveable Type or WordPress, Blosjom is a tad too-Java driven for my tastes and its creator’s website isn’t very helpful. Keep in mind though, I work for Apple, I have to deal with Apple’s solutions (even if some become their own problems) to be sharper at my job.
If I just figure out how to make my site properly notify your RSS watchers (aka Safari for 10.4), it would be pretty perfect!
